Discourse 18. On the Fitness of the Glories
of Mary

{360} YOU may recollect, my brethren, our Lord's words when on the day of
His resurrection He had joined the two disciples on their way to
Emmaus, and found them sad and perplexed in consequence of His death.
He said, "Ought not Christ to suffer these things, and so
enter into His glory?" He appealed to the fitness and congruity
which existed between this otherwise surprising event and the other
truths which had been revealed concerning the Divine purpose of saving
the world. And so, too, St. Paul, in speaking of the same wonderful
appointment of God; "It became Him," he says,
"for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, who
had brought many sons unto glory, to consummate the Author of their
salvation by suffering". Elsewhere, speaking of prophesying, or
the exposition of what is latent in Divine truth, he bids his brethren
exercise the gift "according to the analogy or rule of
faith"; that is, so that the doctrine preached may correspond and
fit into what is already received. Thus, you see, it is a great
evidence of truth, in the case of revealed teaching, that it is so
consistent, that it so hangs together, that one thing springs out of
{361} another, that each part requires and is required by the rest.

This great principle, which is exemplified so variously in the
structure and history of Catholic doctrine, which will receive more
and more illustrations the more carefully and minutely we examine the
subject, is brought before us especially at this season, when we are
celebrating the Assumption of our Blessed Lady, the Mother of God,
into heaven. We receive it on the belief of ages; but, viewed in the
light of reason, it is the fitness of this termination of her
earthly course which so persuasively recommends it to our minds: we
feel it "ought" to be; that it "becomes" her Lord
and Son thus to provide for one who was so singular and special, both
in herself and her relations to Him. We find that it is simply in
harmony with the substance and main outlines of the doctrine of the
Incarnation, and that without it Catholic teaching would have a
character of incompleteness, and would disappoint our pious
expectations.

Let us direct our thoughts to this subject today, my brethren; and
with a view of helping you to do so, I will first state what the
Church has taught and defined from the first ages concerning the
Blessed Virgin, and then you will see how naturally the devotion which
her children show her, and the praises with which they honour her,
follow from it.

Now, as you know, it has been held from the first, and defined from
an early age, that Mary is the Mother of God. She is not merely the
Mother of our Lord's manhood, or of our Lord's body, but she is to be
considered {362} the Mother of the Word Himself, the Word incarnate. God, in
the person of the Word, the Second Person of the All-glorious Trinity,
humbled Himself to become her Son. Non horruisti Virginis uterum,
as the Church sings, "Thou didst not disdain the Virgin's
womb". He took the substance of His human flesh from her, and
clothed in it He lay within her; and He bore it about with Him after
birth, as a sort of badge and witness that He, though God, was hers.
He was nursed and tended by her; He was suckled by her; He lay in her
arms. As time went on, He ministered to her, and obeyed her. He lived
with her for thirty years, in one house, with an uninterrupted
intercourse, and with only the saintly Joseph to share it with Him.
She was the witness of His growth, of His joys, of His sorrows, of His
prayers; she was blest with His smile, with the touch of His hand,
with the whisper of His affection, with the expression of His thoughts
and His feelings, for that length of time. Now, my brethren, what
ought she to be, what is it becoming that she should be, who
was so favoured?

Such a question was once asked by a heathen king, when he would
place one of his subjects in a dignity becoming the relation in which
the latter stood towards him. That subject had saved the king's life,
and what was to be done to him in return? The king asked, "What should
be done to the man whom the king desireth to honour?" And he
received the following answer, "The man whom the king wisheth to
honour ought to be clad in the king's apparel, and to be mounted on
the king's saddle, and to receive the royal {363} diadem on his head; and
let the first among the king's princes and presidents hold his horse,
and let him walk through the streets of the city, and say, Thus shall
he be honoured, whom the king hath a mind to honour". So stands
the case with Mary; she gave birth to the Creator, and what recompense
shall be made her? what shall be done to her, who had this
relationship to the Most High? what shall be the fit accompaniment of
one whom the Almighty has deigned to make, not His servant, not His
friend, not His intimate, but His superior, the source of His second
being, the nurse of His helpless infancy, the teacher of His opening
years? I answer, as the king was answered: Nothing is too high for her
to whom God owes His human life; no exuberance of grace, no excess of
glory, but is becoming, but is to be expected there, where God has
lodged Himself, whence God has issued. Let her "be clad in the
king's apparel," that is, let the fulness of the Godhead so flow
into her that she may be a figure of the incommunicable sanctity, and
beauty, and glory, of God Himself: that she may be the Mirror of
Justice, the Mystical Rose, the Tower of Ivory, the House of Gold, the
Morning Star. Let her "receive the king's diadem upon her
head," as the Queen of heaven, the Mother of all living, the
Health of the weak, the Refuge of sinners, the Comforter of the
afflicted. And "let the first amongst the king's princes walk
before her," let angels and prophets, and apostles, and martyrs,
and all saints, kiss the hem of her garment and rejoice under the
shadow of her throne. Thus is it that King Solomon has risen up {364} to
meet his mother, and bowed himself unto her, and caused a seat to be
set for the king's mother, and she sits on his right hand.

We should be prepared then, my brethren, to believe that the Mother
of God is full of grace and glory, from the very fitness of such a
dispensation, even though we had not been taught it; and this fitness
will appear still more clear and certain when we contemplate the
subject more steadily. Consider then, that it has been the ordinary
rule of God's dealings with us, that personal sanctity should be the
attendant upon high spiritual dignity of place or work. The angels,
who, as the word imports, are God's messengers, are also perfect in
holiness; "without sanctity, no one shall see God;" no
defiled thing can enter the courts of heaven; and the higher its
inhabitants are advanced in their ministry about the throne, the
holier are they, and the more absorbed in their contemplation of that
Holiness upon which they wait. The Seraphim, who immediately surround
the Divine Glory, cry day and night, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God
of Hosts". So is it also on earth; the prophets have ordinarily
not only gifts but graces; they are not only inspired to know and to
teach God's will, but inwardly converted to obey it. For surely those
only can preach the truth duly who feel it personally; those only
transmit it fully from God to man, who have in the transmission made
it their own.

I do not say that there are no exceptions to this rule, but they
admit of an easy explanation; I do not say that it never pleases
Almighty God to convey any {365} intimation of His will through bad men; of
course, for all things can be made to serve Him. By all, even the
wicked, He accomplishes His purposes, and by the wicked He is
glorified. Our Lord's death was brought about by His enemies, who did
His will, while they thought they were gratifying their own. Caiaphas,
who contrived and effected it, was made use of to predict it. Balaam
prophesied good of God's people in an earlier age, by a Divine
compulsion, when he wished to prophesy evil. This is true; but in such
cases Divine Mercy is plainly overruling the evil, and manifesting His
power, without recognising or sanctioning the instrument. And again,
it is true, as He tells us Himself, that in the last day "Many
shall say, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name, and in Thy
Name cast out devils, and done many miracles?" and that He shall
answer, "I never knew you". This, I say, is undeniable; it
is undeniable first, that those who have prophesied in God's Name may
afterwards fall from God, and lose their souls. Let a man be ever so
holy now, he may fall away; and, as present grace is no pledge of
perseverance, much less are present gifts; but how does this show that
gifts and graces do not commonly go together? Again, it is undeniable
that those who have had miraculous gifts may nevertheless have never
been in God's favour, not even when they exercised them; as I will
explain presently. But I am now speaking, not of having gifts, but of
being prophets. To be a prophet is something much more personal than
to possess gifts. It is a sacred office, it implies a mission, and is
the high distinction, not of {366} the enemies of God, but of His friends.
Such is the Scripture rule. Who was the first prophet and preacher of
justice? Enoch, who walked "by faith," and "pleased
God," and was taken from a rebellious world. Who was the second?
"Noe," who "condemned the world, and was made heir of
the justice which is through faith." Who was the next great
prophet? Moses, the lawgiver of the chosen people, who was the
"meekest of all men who dwell on the earth". Samuel comes
next, who served the Lord from his infancy in the Temple; and then
David, who, if he fell into sin, repented, and was "a man after
God's heart". And in like manner Job, Elias, Isaias, Jeremias,
Daniel, and above them all St. John Baptist, and then again St. Peter,
St. Paul, St. John, and the rest, are all especial instances of heroic
virtue, and patterns to their brethren. Judas is the exception, but
this was by a particular dispensation to enhance our Lord's
humiliation and suffering.

Nature itself witnesses to this connexion between sanctity and
truth. It anticipates that the fountain from which doctrine comes
should itself be pure; that the seat of Divine teaching, and the
oracle of faith should be the abode of angels; that the consecrated
home, in which the word of God is elaborated, and whence it issues
forth for the salvation of the many, should be holy, as that word
itself is holy. Here you see the difference of the office of a prophet
and a mere gift, such as that of miracles. Miracles are the simple and
direct work of God; the worker of them is but an instrument or organ.
And in consequence he need not {367} be holy, because he has not, strictly
speaking, a share in the work. So again the power of administering the
Sacraments, which also is supernatural and miraculous, does not imply
personal holiness; nor is there anything surprising in God's giving to
a bad man this gift, or the gift of miracles, any more than in His
giving him any natural talent or gift, strength or agility of frame,
eloquence, or medical skill. It is otherwise with the office of
preaching and prophesying, and to this I have been referring; for the
truth first goes into the minds of the speakers, and is apprehended
and fashioned there, and then comes out from them as, in one sense,
its source and its parent. The Divine word is begotten in them, and
the offspring has their features and tells of them. They are not like
"the dumb animal, speaking with man's voice," on which
Balaam rode, a mere instrument of God's word, but they have
"received an unction from the Holy One, and they know all
things," and "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty"; and while they deliver what they have received, they
enforce what they feel and know. "We have known and believed,"
says St. John, "the charity which God hath to us."

So has it been all through the history of the Church; Moses does
not write as David; nor Isaias as Jeremias; nor St. John as St. Paul.
And so of the great doctors of the Church, St. Athanasius, St.
Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Leo, St. Thomas, each has his own manner,
each speaks his own words, though he speaks the while the words of
God. They speak from themselves, they speak in their own persons, they
speak from the heart, {368} from their own experience, with their own
arguments, with their own deductions, with their own modes of
expression. Now can you fancy, my brethren, such hearts, such feelings
to be unholy? how could it be so, without defiling, and thereby
nullifying, the word of God? If one drop of corruption makes the
purest water worthless, as the slightest savour of bitterness spoils
the most delicate viands, how can it be that the word of truth and
holiness can proceed profitably from impure lips and an earthly heart?
No; as is the tree, so is the fruit; "beware of false
prophets," says our Lord; and then He adds, "from their
fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of
thistles?" Is it not so, my brethren? which of you would go to
ask counsel of another, however learned, however gifted, however aged,
if you thought him unholy? nay, though you feel and are sure, as far
as absolution goes, that a bad priest could give it as really as a
holy priest, yet for advice, for comfort, for instruction, you would
not go to one whom you did not respect. "Out of the abundance of
the heart, mouth speaketh;" "a good man out of the good
treasure of his heart bringeth forth good, and an evil man out of the
evil treasure bringeth forth evil".

So then is it in the case of the soul; but, as regards the Blessed
Mary, a further thought suggests itself. She has no chance place in
the Divine Dispensation; the Word of God did not merely come to her
and go from her; He did not pass through her, as He visits us in Holy
Communion. It was no heavenly body which the Eternal Son {369} assumed,
fashioned by the angels, and brought down to this lower world: no; He
imbibed, He absorbed into His Divine Person, her blood and the
substance of her flesh; by becoming man of her, He received her
lineaments and features, as the appropriate character in which He was
to manifest Himself to mankind. The child is like the parent, and we
may well suppose that by His likeness to her was manifested her
relationship to Him. Her sanctity comes, not only of her being His
mother, but also of His being her son. "If the first fruit be
holy," says St. Paul, "the mass also is holy; if the mass be
holy, so are the branches." And hence the titles which we are
accustomed to give her. He is the Wisdom of God, she therefore is the
Seat of Wisdom; His Presence is Heaven, she therefore is the Gate of
Heaven; He is infinite Mercy, she then is the Mother of Mercy. She is
the Mother of "fair love and fear, and knowledge and holy
hope"; is it wonderful then that she has left behind her in the
Church below "an odour like cinnamon and balm, and sweetness like
to choice myrrh"?

Such, then, is the truth ever cherished in the deep heart of the
Church, and witnessed by the keen apprehension of her children, that
no limits but those proper to a creature can be assigned to the
sanctity of Mary. Therefore, did Abraham believe that a son should be
born to him of his aged wife? then Mary's faith must be held as
greater when she accepted Gabriel's message. Did Judith consecrate her
widowhood to God to the surprise {370} of her people? much more did Mary,
from her first youth, devote her virginity. Did Samuel, when a child,
inhabit the Temple, secluded from the world? Mary too was by her
parents lodged in the same holy precincts, even at the age when
children first can choose between good and evil. Was Solomon on his
birth called "dear to the Lord"? and shall not the destined
Mother of God be dear to Him from the moment she was born? But further
still; St. John Baptist was sanctified by the Spirit before his birth;
shall Mary be only equal to him? is it not fitting that her privilege
should surpass his? is it wonderful, if grace, which anticipated his
birth by three months, should in her case run up to the very first
moment of her being, outstrip the imputation of sin, and be beforehand
with the usurpation of Satan? Mary must surpass all the saints; the
very fact that certain privileges are known to have been theirs
persuades us, almost from the necessity of the case, that she had the
same and higher. Her conception was immaculate, in order that she
might surpass all saints in the date as well as the fulness of her
sanctification.

But in a festive season, my dear brethren, I must not weary you
with argument, when we should offer specially to the Blessed Virgin
the homage of our love and loyalty; yet, let me finish as I have
begun;—I will be brief, but bear with me if I view her bright
Assumption, as I have viewed her immaculate purity, rather as a point
of doctrine than as a theme for devotion.

It was surely fitting then, it was becoming, that she {371} should be
taken up into heaven and not lie in the grave till Christ's second
coming, who had passed a life of sanctity and of miracle such as hers.
All the works of God are in a beautiful harmony; they are carried on
to the end as they begin. This is the difficulty which men of the
world find in believing miracles at all; they think these break the
order and consistency of God's visible word, not knowing that they do
but subserve a higher order of things, and introduce a supernatural
perfection. But at least, my brethren, when one miracle is wrought, it
may be expected to draw others after it for the completion of what is
begun. Miracles must be wrought for some great end; and if the course
of things fell back again into a natural order before its termination,
how could we but feel a disappointment? and if we were told that this
certainly was to be, how could we but judge the information improbable
and difficult to believe? Now this applies to the history of our Lady.
I say, it would be a greater miracle if, her life being what it was,
her death was like that of other men, than if it were such as to
correspond to her life. Who can conceive, my brethren, that God should
so repay the debt, which He condescended to owe to His Mother, for the
elements of His human body, as to allow the flesh and blood from which
it was taken to moulder in the grave? Do the sons of men thus deal
with their mothers? do they not nourish and sustain them in their
feebleness, and keep them in life while they are able? Or who can
conceive that that virginal frame, which never sinned, was to undergo
the death of a sinner? Why should {372} she share the curse of Adam, who had
no share in his fall? "Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt
return," was the sentence upon sin; she then, who was not a
sinner, fitly never saw corruption. She died, then, as we hold,
because even our Lord and Saviour died; she died, as she suffered,
because she was in this world, because she was in a state of things in
which suffering and death are the rule. She lived under their external
sway; and, as she obeyed Caesar by coming for enrolment to Bethlehem,
so did she, when God willed it, yield to the tyranny of death, and was
dissolved into soul and body, as well as others. But though she died
as well as others, she died not as others die; for, through the merits
of her Son, by whom she was what she was, by the grace of Christ which
in her had anticipated sin, which had filled her with light, which had
purified her flesh from all defilement, she was also saved from
disease and malady, and all that weakens and decays the bodily frame.
Original sin had not been found in her, by the wear of her senses, and
the waste of her frame, and the decrepitude of years, propagating
death. She died, but her death was a mere fact, not an effect; and,
when it was over, it ceased to be. She died that she might live, she
died as a matter of form or (as I may call it) an observance, in order
to fulfil, what is called, the debt of nature,—not primarily for
herself or because of sin, but to submit herself to her condition, to
glorify God, to do what her Son did; not however as her Son and
Saviour, with any suffering for any special end; not with a martyr's
death, for {373} her martyrdom had been in living; not as an atonement, for
man could not make it, and One had made it, and made it for all; but
in order to finish her course, and to receive her crown.

And therefore she died in private. It became Him, who died for the
world, to die in the world's sight; it became the Great Sacrifice to
be lifted up on high, as a light that could not be hid. But she, the
lily of Eden, who had always dwelt out of the sight of man, fittingly
did she die in the garden's shade, and amid the sweet flowers in which
she had lived. Her departure made no noise in the world. The Church
went about her common duties, preaching, converting, suffering; there
were persecutions, there was fleeing from place to place, there were
martyrs, there were triumphs; at length the rumour spread abroad that
the Mother of God was no longer upon earth. Pilgrims went to and fro;
they sought for her relics, but they found them not; did she die at
Ephesus? or did she die at Jerusalem? reports varied; but her tomb
could not be pointed out, or if it was found, it was open; and instead
of her pure and fragrant body, there was a growth of lilies from the
earth which she had touched. So inquirers went home marvelling, and
waiting for further light. And then it was said, how that when her
dissolution was at hand, and her soul was to pass in triumph before
the judgment-seat of her Son, the apostles were suddenly gathered
together in the place, even in the Holy City, to bear part in the
joyful ceremonial; how that they buried her with fitting rites; how
that the third day, when they came {374} to the tomb, they found it empty,
and angelic choirs with their glad voices were heard singing day and
night the glories of their risen Queen. But, however we feel towards
the details of this history (nor is there anything in it which will be
unwelcome or difficult to piety), so much cannot be doubted, from the
consent of the whole Catholic world and the revelations made to holy
souls, that, as is befitting, she is, soul and body, with her Son and
God in heaven, and that we are enabled to celebrate, not only her
death, but her Assumption.

And now, my dear brethren, what is befitting in us, if all that I
have been telling you is befitting in Mary? If the Mother of Emmanuel
ought to be the first of creatures in sanctity and in beauty; if it
became her to be free from all sin from the very first, and from the
moment she received her first grace to begin to merit more; and if
such as was her beginning, such was her end, her conception immaculate
and her death an assumption; if she died, but revived, and is exalted
on high; what is befitting in the children of such a Mother, but an
imitation, in their measure, of her devotion, her meekness, her
simplicity, her modesty, and her sweetness? Her glories are not only
for the sake of her Son, they are for our sakes also. Let us copy her
faith, who received God's message by the angel without a doubt; her
patience, who endured St. Joseph's surprise without a word; her
obedience, who went up to Bethlehem in the winter and bore our Lord in
a stable; her meditative spirit, who pondered {375} in her heart what she
saw and heard about Him; her fortitude, whose heart the sword went
through; her self-surrender, who gave Him up during His ministry and
consented to His death.

Above all, let us imitate her purity, who, rather than relinquish
her virginity, was willing to lose Him for a Son. O my dear children,
young men and young women, what need have you of the intercession of
the Virgin-mother, of her help, of her pattern, in this respect! What
shall bring you forward in the narrow way, if you live in the world,
but the thought and patronage of Mary? What shall seal your senses,
what shall tranquillise your heart, when sights and sounds of danger
are around you, but Mary? What shall give you patience and endurance,
when you are wearied out with the length of the conflict with evil,
with the unceasing necessity of precautions, with the irksomeness of
observing them, with the tediousness of their repetition, with the
strain upon your mind, with your forlorn and cheerless condition, but
a loving communion with her! She will comfort you in your
discouragements, solace you in your fatigues, raise you after your
falls, reward you for your successes. She will show you her Son, your
God and your all. When your spirit within you is excited, or relaxed,
or depressed, when it loses its balance, when it is restless and
wayward, when it is sick of what it has, and hankers after what it has
not, when your eye is solicited with evil and your mortal frame
trembles under the shadow of the tempter, what will bring you to
yourselves, to peace and to health, but the {376} cool breath of the
Immaculate and the fragrance of the Rose of Sharon? It is the boast of
the Catholic Religion, that it has the gift of making the young heart
chaste; and why is this, but that it gives us Jesus Christ for our
food, and Mary for our nursing Mother? Fulfil this boast in
yourselves; prove to the world that you are following no false
teaching, vindicate the glory of your Mother Mary, whom the world
blasphemes, in the very face of the world, by the simplicity of your
own deportment, and the sanctity of your words and deeds. Go to her
for the royal heart of innocence. She is the beautiful gift of God,
which outshines the fascinations of a bad world, and which no one ever
sought in sincerity and was disappointed. She is the personal type and
representative image of that spiritual life and renovation in grace,
"without which no one shall see God". "Her spirit is
sweeter than honey, and her heritage than the honeycomb. They that eat
her shall yet be hungry, and they that drink her shall still thirst.
Whoso hearkeneth to her shall not be confounded, and they that work by
her shall not sin."